Opinion: Mental health crisis support cuts endanger lives in Estonia

Opinion article addressing the risks of cuts to crisis support funding, particularly Lifeline, in Estonia. Author Marcus Ehasoo emphasizes that receiving help during late-night crisis calls can save lives. Budget-saving measures affecting social and healthcare services may prove more costly to the state in the long term.

Imagine this: it's night, the phone rings and on the other end is someone who doesn't know if they want to see tomorrow morning. In such a moment, a Lifeline volunteer is the only one present, not to solve the person's financial problems or change their living conditions, but to listen and help them survive those dark minutes.

Yet in Estonia, it is precisely such services that face cuts driven primarily by short-term cost savings. Marcus Ehasoo raises the question: what do we actually lose when we cut funding in places where help is most needed by society's most vulnerable people?

Short-sighted savings

Reducing funding for crisis support and mental health services may appear to be a numerically sensible decision, but in reality it can result in far greater costs, both human and financial. Each person helped through a crisis represents potentially saved years of life, avoided hospitalisation and restored work capacity.

In Estonia, where mental health problems are an increasingly serious social concern, cuts to support services are particularly dangerous. The number of those needing help does not decrease in line with budget cuts, it grows. And when the support network disappears, the consequences fall on people's shoulders and ultimately on the state budget as well.

What the state actually protects

When we talk about a state-defence mindset, we must ask: what do we actually protect? Borders and infrastructure, yes, but also people and their wellbeing. A state where crisis support is accessible only to those who can manage on their own is a state where the most vulnerable are left behind.

Ehasoo's message is clear: cuts that affect most directly the saving of human lives are not simply a budgetary technicality. They are a question of values. What matters to us as a society, only what is cheap and measurable, or also what is humane and essential?